CDP Institute

API-led ad serving company Kevel has secured $23 million in Series C funding. The funding is expected to allow Kevel to lean harder into retail media and drive product innovation, both to retailers and to marketplaces offering on-site retail media ad products. Kevel also announced the expansion of its C-Suite, adding former Frame.io CRO Puja Rios as President/COO.

Daasity, an analytics and data platform for consumer brands with omnichannel digital strategies, has announced the acquisition of Red Fox Analytics, a platform focused on retail CPG. As a combined digital and retail analytics platform, it will expand the range of sources of data brands can access in one place. The move seeks to break down ecommerce and retail data silos.

Twenty-seven billion dollars will be spent in 2024 on data, data services and infrastructure in support of some $270 billion in U.S. media buying across data-driven channels according to a white paper from strategic consultancy Winterberry Group. This spend is set to surpass $33 billion by 2027. Also foreseen, the evolution of CDPs from “systems of record” to unified intelligence and data management platforms.

Despite an apparent consensus that “Made for Advertising” sites provide a poor user experience and are damaging to the reputation of digital (and especially programmatic) advertising, Amazon and other major DSPs are still serving ads on MFA sites according to research by Adalytics. Supply sources are still full of “garbage inventory.” The ANA recommends advertisers become more active stewards of their media investments.

Proximic by Comscore’s natural language processing engine and AI contextual categorization technology will deliver to Epsilon insights into content including brand suitability and inventory quality in a new partnership. The contextual classifications will be used by Epsilon Digital, the company’s adtech platform. Contextual data is seen as increasingly valuable in an ad eco-system no longer supported by cookie-like tracking signals.

TikTok will be upgrading its Creator portal to the Creator Academy providing extensive education resources about the platform. This will focus on teaching creators about monetization opportunities. Reflecting TikTok’s international market, the Academy will initially be available in seven languages with more to come.

Management teams are almost twice as concerned about the lack of infrastructure for AI technology development than CEOs (32% vs. 17%) according to a survey of over 160 corporate retail employees. One third of management teams worry about the impact of AI on the workforce compared with 21% of CEOs. Strikingly, 90% of all those surveyed claimed to know how AI works in retail.

Businesses are bullish about disrupting their industries with AI with 78% considering it a competitive opportunity. However, fewer than 30% believe their IT teams have the key capabilities for rapid adoption. This is based on a poll of 300 C-suite, VPs or directors conducted by MIT Technology Insights in collaboration with telco company Telstra.

Eighty-five per cent of organizations are investing in AI technology, 72% of CIOs are “apprehensive” about regulating AI internally and 86% have Implemented formal AI Policies. AI is regareded as the number one priority for 2024, although CIOs are also thinking about cybersecurity and sustainability. Digital services company Logicalis interviewed 1,000 CIOs globally for the tenth edition of their CIO report.

Measuring ad performance was never easy, but privacy-related data restrictions and fragmented media channels have made it much harder than ever.  Google is offering Meridian, an open-source media mix modeling system that won’t be as precise as cookie-based measurement but does promise to draw a meaningful big picture.  It’s in limited release now with plans to offer it to everyone “coming soon”.

Post-cookie measurement is on the minds of Topsort, a retail media adtech startup that just raised a $20 million Series A.  The company offers a retail media tech stack, data clean room, and retailer ad network.  They’re especially proud of their AI-driven ad bidding engine.

Location data raises plenty of privacy issues but Placer.ai sidesteps them by selling aggregated traffic information.  They have just expanded their partnership with retail analytics giant dunnhumby, which will use the information to build a unified picture of in-store and out-of-store customer journeys.